Governor David Paterson
By Marc Morial
President and CEO
National Urban League
"Let me reintroduce myself: I am David A. Paterson and I am the Governor of the State of New York." With those words, on March 17, Lieutenant Governor David Paterson became New York's 55th Governor, the state's first legally blind chief executive and the nation's fourth African American Governor. Paterson joins Reconstruction-era Governor P.B.S. Pinchback from my home state of Louisiana, current Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick and former Virginia Governor L. Douglas Wilder.
Born in Brooklyn in 1954, Paterson developed an infection as a child that left him blind in one eye and severely impaired in the other. That did not stop him from earning a history degree from Columbia University in 1977 and a law degree from Hofstra in 1983.
Paterson's political career took off when he was elected to the State Senate in 1985 to represent the 30th district of New York
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